China’s economy: powerhouse or menace

In the past three decades, China has been transformed from an impoverished backwater into the world’s second-biggest economy and largest trading nation. Yet as the recent tumult on global markets shows, China risks destabilising the world as it makes the hard shift from an investment-driven to a consumer-oriented economy, said Arthur Kroeber, head of research at Gavekal and editor of the China Economic Quarterly at an FCC lunch on June 22.

The headwinds of a rapidly ageing population, a battle against rampant corruption and an enormous national debt are slowing the country’s growth. Will China mature into a global economic leader? Or face a sudden crisis and stagnate like Japan?

Kroeber, one of the world’s leading commentators on the Chinese economy, also the foundered the China-focused Gavekal Dragonomics research service in 2002 Before that he spent 15 years as a financial and economic journalist in China and South Asia.